Socket A-based computer no longer boots

C

carl67lp

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Oct 17, 2001
Messages
4,554
My fiancee has my old Socket A system and lately it's been being a bastard. While I had it, everything ran okay. I put the motherboard/CPU/RAM into a new case for her (with a generic 400W power supply--her choice, not mine) and things were okay. About a month ago the system would hang when doing mundane things, then would hang when, say, running iTunes. I suspected a memory issue or perhaps CPU trouble--nothing there. (No drivers had been changed.)

Finally, it got to the point where the system would not even boot for her without her having to hard reset it over and over. There would be no beeps, no display on the monitor, nothing. Eventually she could get it to boot, but then it would hang as before.

This weekend I brought it to my place to try to diagnose and repair it. I encountered the same trouble and decided to remove the ancillary case fans from the PSU. No change. I removed the hard drive from the PSU, again no dice. I had a spare 350W Antec PSU lying around and attempted that. Nothing changed.

At this point I noticed that the CMOS reset pins had no jumper. Not sure if this was correct I attempted boot with a jumper in 1-2, then in 2-3. Nothing.

Suspecting faulty memory I removed one stick, leaving one; then I swapped this arrangement. Nothing.

Finally, worried about the implications, I removed the CPU (Athlon XP 1700+) and swapped it with a spare 1GHz Duron. No change at all.

To say that I'm mystified is an understatement. I have absolutely no clue what's going on. My only thought left is that the motherboard has somehow gone bad. We've replaced the CMOS battery once or twice in the past, and the latest is reasonably fresh. While I haven't removed all PCI cards and just left the video card, I doubt there would be a change.

Should I just concede defeat and get her a S754 setup? That's really what I'm leaning towards.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.
 
Look at the capacitors on the mother board, if they're bulging or leaking that may be your problem. I recently helped a guy who was having stability problems, his capacitors were bad and a new motherboard fixed all of his problems.
 
pj-schmidt said:
Look at the capacitors on the mother board, if they're bulging or leaking that may be your problem. I recently helped a guy who was having stability problems, his capacitors were bad and a new motherboard fixed all of his problems.
Click to expand...

I'll check that when I return home. Any other tips, anyone?
 
Check the voltage regulators for signs of failiure, too. The slow failiure reeks of bad power conditioning.

Lately, it would seem like all the people I know who have Socket A boards have been seeing them fail. Maybe it's just their time. They're saying, "you can buy a new Socket A board for thirty bucks, I know, I just checked Newegg," in little bad-capacitor lisps. . .
 
Axman said:
Check the voltage regulators for signs of failiure, too. The slow failiure reeks of bad power conditioning.
Click to expand...

How would I go about checking that?
 
They can leak, be discolored, be loose, rattle on the inside. . .the best way to be sure is to check them with an ohmeter/ multimeter, but they're not exactly replaceable. Here's what I see: you've got a computer that has been showing signs of slow decline into failure, with the one major constant component being the motherboard. You have swapped around PSUs, RAM and processors to no avail, still no beeps or hums. No magic smoke to be let out, but on the other hand, that would have blown away long ago.

Nobody likes to stick a new motherboard in. At best, you pull off the repair install of Windows, and at worst you install it to another hard drive, flog the files out that were important to you from the old drive, and start all over from the snappy-but-ludicrously repetetive task of installing all the shit you forgot you used every damn day.

But on the one chance that you find the exact motherboard you used to have on eBay, you just swap it out and turn everything on. Don't get excited, though, because as soon as you jump the gun you'll put an angular pressure on the heat sink, torque the thing down on one corner of the silicon die and snap that processor into so much busted glass; and then you've got to buy a new processor to go with that new motherboard and you've spent an amount of money that could have been used to buy a slightly better computer.

So talk to your wife and see if she isn't interested spending a couple of nights out's worth of dough on something a little newer. Girls like getting new things, if you're married, you totally know that, and personal things, too. So maybe you won't tell her what you're doing, you're busy "Fixin' it, it's a pain, it drives me crazy, grr," (and if you're lucky, she'll bring you beer to make you feel better about fixing her computer, that's always nice) when secretly you've got assembled for her a brand-new one. That will win you serious points to make up for a couple of weeks ago when you got her name confused with her friend's name (which, come one, they're both two syllable names that start with the letter L for shit's sake, but fuck all when you do it on Valentine's).

I dunno, hit it with a hammer, then you'll know what's wrong with it.
 
Axman, thanks for the great chuckle. :D

I'm thinking I'll end up going the S754 route and just get a new mobo and processor at the same time. Ought to get new RAM too, but that's not in the budget.

My fiancee says she'll deal with the old Duron setup but I know that won't last. Plus, I'm not 100% sure it's stable either, so that's a bit of a pain.

I'll check everything on the board tonight and see if there's anything obviously physically wrong.
 
I took a look at the board. Two of the capacitors nearest the CPU socket appeared to have some sort of corrosion on top. I brushed it aside (not with my fingers, thank you!) and up came a waft of what smelled rather like ammonia or battery corrosion (like when you leave the AAs in the remote too long).

Looks like that might have been the board's undoing.

I can take pictures if need be, for confirmation--much of the brownish white corrosion still remains.
 
Alright, so that's dead dead dead.

I built a computer for my (now ex) girlfriend for Christmas, though my (non-hardware) advice may always be taken with a grain of salt, but I seriously took the prize for best gift in her circle of friends and coworkers. I presented each box, giftwrapped separately as upgrades for her previous, dated computer, which was a hand-me-down anyway. That was, until her dad was like, "Molly, there's a whole computer here," and I let her put it together while telling her what to do. There were chicks at work who were like, ". . .All I got was stupid jewelery. . ."

I got an SFF 754 barebones which is just phenomenal: the AOpen XCCube 761, which is a motherboard that supports PCI-Express with on-board video and sound, custom heatpipe tower-style heat sink, power supply and elegant little case with drive masks. Anyway, with the shipping taken into consideration, it even cost less than buying those parts separately.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16856140021

And it's compatible with Turion chips, I know, I got a BabelFished email from their engineering department confirming that.
 
My trusty old socket A mobo just died a few months after giving it to my brother.......took me forever to diagnose that it was the problem. I guess socket A's have about a three or four year shelf life.......
 
If you're ok with a SFF, I'd second the EX761.

Here's a thread I started a wile back.
EX761

I think it's a great system.
 
I think the budget won't support going with the SFF route--while it's tempting to replace the case and PSU at the same time, I don't think that will happen. Right now she's pretty well convinced that she'll use her iBook until we've got some extra money, and at that point we'd just get a new mobo and processor.

Thanks for all of the input, everyone. I certainly appreciate it!
 
Both the ram sticks could have gone bad, after u find a spare ram stick laying around, put it in without any of the other ram with it. If it doesnt boot it's 100% sure the motherboard is the problem. However, the crap ass psu could have killed more than that (yes I know it was the psu that cause the problem, it ussually is with shitty psus). So, be prepared for a rude awakening when you replace the motherboard.

~Adam
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top